Getting started with Watchfox

Goal

Use this guide when you are setting up Watchfox for the first time or creating a new client project.

Recommended first setup

• Create or open your workspace.
• Create a project for one client, website, product, or service group.
• Add your first monitor. For most websites, start with Uptime or Keyword.
• Add at least one alert channel so incidents do not stay only inside the dashboard.
• Create a status page or open a monthly report to understand the client-facing output.

Create your account and workspace

• Sign in or sign up using the app entry point from the public site.
• Create a workspace for your company, agency, or team.
• Use projects to separate clients, websites, products, or service groups.
• Invite team members only when the workspace, roles, and project structure are ready.

Create your first monitor

• Use Uptime when you want to know whether a website or endpoint responds correctly.
• Use Keyword when the page must contain or must not contain specific text.
• Add TLS monitoring for certificate validity and expiry awareness.
• Add Domain monitoring for domain expiry awareness.
• Add Heartbeat monitoring for cron jobs and scheduled tasks.
• Add Sitemap monitoring for light sitemap validation and broken-link detection within sitemap scope.

Add your first alert channel

• Configure at least one alert channel before relying on a project for production monitoring.
• Use email for simple setup.
• Use Slack, Microsoft Teams, Discord, Google Chat, or webhook channels where they match your team workflow.
• Send a test alert after creating a channel.
• Review first alert delay, repeat reminders, and recovery alerts before enabling production monitoring.

Create a status page

• Create a status page when you want a customer-safe view of service health.
• Add components with public-safe names such as Website, API, Checkout, or Client portal.
• Review the public page before sharing it with customers.
• Do not expose internal IDs, secrets, raw error payloads, or engineering-only debug data.

Open monthly reports

• Use monthly reports to summarize uptime, incidents, downtime, trends, and report context.
• Download a monthly PDF when your plan allows it.
• Use authenticated CSV exports when you need detailed data behind the report.
• Check the selected project and month before sending a report to a client.

Billing basics

• Open Billing in the app to review plan, limits, usage, and subscription state.
• Upgrade when you need more monitors, faster checks, more status pages, report branding, API access, scheduled reports, custom domains, or other higher-plan capabilities.
• Downgrade carefully because lower plans can reduce available limits or feature access.
• Contact [email protected] for billing, refund, payment, or subscription questions.

What to check before inviting clients

• Monitor labels should be customer-readable.
• Alert channels should point to the right team.
• Status page component names should be public-safe.
• Reports should use the right project and month.
• Planned maintenance should be configured before expected downtime.